1. Field of Invention
At least one embodiment of the invention relates to automated test equipment and, more particularly, to a system and method of waveform generation and measurement in such equipment.
2. Discussion of Related Art
Today, many semiconductor integrated circuits are highly complex and require sophisticated automated test equipment (ATE) to test for manufacturing defects. Generally, ATE is used to test integrated circuits (ICs) by applying test patterns stored in the ATE memory to the IC under test and comparing the chip response to the expected response. These test patterns typically involve waveform and timing generation via an application specific integrated circuit (ASIC). Drawbacks to ASICs include expense and time to produce, and cost to revise for bug fixes and future enhancements. This increases the cost of the ATE, which is already typically very high due to the need for complex, high performance computing equipment to carry out the testing.
Despite the sometimes prohibitive cost of ATE, they are essential to many companies. Testing of each manufactured integrated circuit before it is shipped to a customer is important because a significant percentage of fabricated integrated circuits contain manufacturing defects, especially in case of large-scale integrated circuits. Therefore, it is important to screen out these defective chips before they are shipped to a customer. Thus, it would be desirable to provide an ATE that includes off-the-shelf components and systems so as to reduce cost and allow for migration to higher performance options as the component technology advances.